Ready to Talk to Strangers?

This is a class with two goals:
1. build an exhibit (as a group) that encourages strangers to talk to each other
2. design a social media plan (as an individual) for a museum exhibit, program, or initiative
That’s it. Do that, and you win.

Jenkins describes our society as historically having many media outlets that were all separate and distinct. But now, through the powers of digitization and corporate conglomerates, our media is much more interconnected. Jenkins describes this phenomenon as being more of a cultural shift than a technological one. The most attention grabbing part of this conversation to me, was the idea that media convergence is a long-term transition period, that will have old and new technologies and ideas living side by side for a long time. And, even more shocking than that, many of the old media we know (radio, tv, etc) probably won’t ever disappear. Rather its purpose, use, audience, function will change. This was a comforting thought to an old fuddy-duddy like me. While convergence is a big thing, it does not necessarily make current systems obsolete.

Media
What is it? According to Jenkins:

communication form

series of protocols around the form (i.e. saying “hello” on the telephone, buying a ticket for a movie, and other social, political, economic and material relationships)

This definition, when taken in context with changing media, implies a larger ripples in our cultural fabric than just a change in how we communicate with one another.

Affinity Spaces
Jenkins borrows this concept from educational theorist James Paul Gee, and I think it could have great implications for our application of social media in museums. This theory is basically about informal learning spaces. As Jenkins notes, people seem to “learn more from pop culture than they do from text books.” He says at Gee’s theory of creating an “affinity space” for informal learning improves the learning experience because (and this is loosely paraphrased/quoted from my notes, see pg 177):

“learning is driven by common endeavor which overcomes differences in age, class, race, gender and education that governs learning in classroom settings.” (i.e. anonymity provides an equal playing field for cooperative learning)

allows participation of various skill levels/interests

“relies on peer-to-peer teaching that motivates participants to continually learn”

I look at these through the lens of museum education, and think how awesome would it be to see museum goers participate like this in their informal learning experiences. What if instead of Harry Potter fanfic (which Jenkins applies this theory to), our audiences were helping eachother learn about biodiversity or civil rights. The potential is awesome!

FYI
This book is amazing and available online for free through the UW libraries (here). Just use the off campus log-in option with net id to get it full text and searchable. Which means no waiting and no library fines! Hooray!

As someone who does participate in fandom “affininty spaces,” I see where your excitement comes from, and the desire to apply the theory of affinity spaces to issues that are more relevant to society than popular culture. It’s an incredibly powerful tool.

But, I really think the key point of affinity spaces is the passion. If there aren’t participants who really care about the source issue, whether it’s Harry Potter or biodiversity, enough to go out and teach each other. So, I think the other half of what museums need to really use this theory is find a way to get visitors to really personally engage with what we want to present to them, enough that they want to participate.

As a participant in these communities, that’s what really gets me excited about convergence culture, and fandom in general. Sure, pop culture might be trivial, but a well-done narrative can really push readers into not just wanting to write fanfiction or make videos, but also learn more about the subject outside the context of the fandom (a particular example I can think of is Hikaru no Go).

So, I think one thing museums can do, is use their spaces not just as a place where audiences can teach each other, but maybe as a place to show how the concepts we convey to the audience apply and connect to what they really care about in the outside world. Or conversely, to use what the audience already cares about in the pop-culture sphere, to invite them to learn and teach about the issues museums want to convey.